The new Research Strand of the ELAR TEKS requires that students be able to gather information from electronic sources, use advanced search strategies, and distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources. But in the Age of the Internet, it is easy to find ourselves adrift in the sea of information, drowning in the digital ocean that engulfs us. In this session, we will get our feet on solid ground again with a hands-on, step-by-step exploration of the new tools and concepts that were introduced in Parts 1 and 2.

We will explore a wide range of effective search tools and strategies—from library databases to “folksonomies.” We will practice tagging, highlighting, annotating, sharing, and organizing online resources using Diigo. We will investigate the critical characteristics to consider when evaluating websites, and yes, we will even discuss Wikipedia. All are welcome to join even if you missed the previous sessions. Don’t forget to bring your own laptop!

Step 1: Begin with the Research Organizer

Step 2: Use the NEISD Library Portal to Begin Your Search

If you are on a school computer, there may be a shortcut to the "Library Portal" on your desktop, or you can use the library link from your campus website.

Start with the EBSCOhost Research Databases

Choose the databases you think will be relevant to your search, and click continue (at the bottom of the screen).
Type in your search term(s) and hit search.
Notice what happens when you "Narrow Results" on the left side and "Limit your results" on the right side
Note that when you are looking at the results for a specific article/resource--the page where you see the "Abstract" describing the article, you can click the "Bookmark" button that looks like this:
and then choose Diigo to bookmark it to your account.

Next try the Thompson Gale Power Search

This time, choose "Select All" products. Type in your search term(s) and hit search.
Limit your results to "fulltext" and see what happens when you change media typs using the tabs across the top (magazines, academic journals, etc.)
Ready to bookmark something?
Oops, the share button doesn't have a diigo option yet. (I've asked them to add it.)
Open your diigo page in the next tab of your Internet browser.
From your "My Library" view, find the "Add a bookmark" box on the right-hand side of the page.
Copy and past the URL into the box, click "Add" and then title, describe, tag, and share as usual.

Step 3: Try Different Search Engines

Use tabbed browsing to open multiple search engines at once.
Try the exact same search terms in each search engine and compare the results.

Cuil "ranks pages based on popularity and relevance"Kartoo "draws a semantic map to see the topics and refine your search"Wolfram Alpha is a "computational knowledge engine"

Clusty "searches top search engines, combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on comparative ranking"Dogpile searches Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask all at onceMetacrawler searches Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and About all at once

Still Not Sure Which Search Engines to Use?

Step 4: Use Advanced Search Strategies in Google

Add the following modifiers to limit your search results.
Also, try the "Advanced Search" options.
After you've done a search, try clicking the "Show options" buttons at the top of the results list to limit by type, time, format, and/or content.
Once you find a good website in the list of results, you can click "similar" to find more like it.